Multiple Websites Duplicate keywords

[#1]

We have several different businesses that sell the same products.  Is it better to have one brand bid on specific keywords or all the brands bid to have more presence?  The latter will increase my bids, but to me I don't care which brand gets the sale as long as it isn't the competition.

Thoughts?

[#2]

Let's look at this from a slightly different perspective - because whilst you have the same products, you have different businesses. That's what makes each case different - and this is how to delineate your keyword choices, and your approach to them.

Because whilst you're bidding on the same keyword, each business will have a different approach given their specialties. That means each business will have a different market terrain (as it were) - geography, demographic, etc, etc. And since their approach is different, they'll have slightly different ads to appeal to those customers they can serve best - and slightly different negative keywords, landing pages and all that kind of thing.

And leave the rest to the Google algorithm! It will pop the appropriate ad in place for each search term that someone enters - and each of your companies will have a different slice of the market (market niche) to go at. So whilst you're bidding on the same keywords, you're actually speaking to very different areas of the marketplace!

Did you follow that ???

I'm around so if you want to ask questions, please do so!

[#3]

Hello;
This is an interesting question:...
If you are using the same account to target all brands i.e (different campaigns or ad-groups), then the question becomes redundant - since only one ad per account on SERP. (The brand name that matches the search query will trigger the ad)
IF you comply with the conditions listed on the "double serving" for "multiple brands owned by the same entity" -  this becomes a strategy question;

Which is correct?

[#4]

They are separate businesses and not considered "double serving". They are under different accounts, different websites, etc.

[#5]

Ultimately, this comes down to what Gemma L was talking about. What's the business objective of having 4 separate businesses that deliver the same product set (have the same product inventory?)? Car dealers often have this sort of dilemma, but their branding objective is clear based on their relationship with a manufacturer. If the objective for your businesses is simply to dominate the marketplace, then it doesn't matter as long as you adhere to the "double serving" conditions. If each business targets a different audience or market, then the "optimized" way of doing this is to build each account around that market/audience. Where there is "keyword crossover" there will certainly be some sort of bid inflation, but that can be mitigated once you have enough data to decide which property is best suited to convert for a keyword.